Washington (CNN) - President Barack Obama launched a major assault Tuesday on the House-passed Republican budget proposal embraced by front-running GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney, calling it "social Darwinism" that would stifle the American dream.

In a speech to a media luncheon, Obama described the measure prepared by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, and passed by the House as a "Trojan Horse" that is disguised as a deficit reduction plan but actually imposes a "radical vision."

soundoff(30 Responses)

Rudy NYC

Strong language. The Romney/Ryan Plan contains everything the GWB admininistration tried to do, but failed. The plan also explodes our national debt that the Republicans will blame on Democrats because they do not wish to agree to conservative spending cuts, which is a brilliantly self-serving argument to make.

April 3, 2012 11:14 am at 11:14 am |

Wire Palladin, S. F.

The right wingnuts will not be happy that anyone dare point out the flaws in the Ryan/Romney budget fiasco. The national debt will once again be increased by the GObP. Tax cuts for the wealthy, their big oil and Wall Street base, all to be paid for by seniors, the middle class, the uninsured, women, veterans, and the poor. This time it may not play well to those making less than $250,000.

April 3, 2012 11:18 am at 11:18 am |

Bill from GA

What's to attack??

Don't all Americans want to see Medicare turned into a voucher system only the wealthy can afford to use?
Don't all Americans want to see payroll taxes for the wealthy cut more?
Don't all Americans want to see the military given unlimited funding, while services for the less fortunate are reduced or eliminated?
Don't all Americans want to see any deficit reduction that MIGHT occur done so on the backs of the middle and lower wage earners?

April 3, 2012 11:20 am at 11:20 am |

Four and The Door

"In this country, broad-based prosperity has never trickled down from the success of a wealthy few," Obama will say, according to the excerpts. "It has always come from the success of a strong and growing middle class."
_____________________________________________________________________________________________
Okay, so Obama has decided to embrace the "Class Warfare" strategy again. Today.
The only problem is that Mitt Romney is the guy that will give a 20% tax break to every American worker ( notice no class distinction here ). This seems like someone helping every American.
All Obama will talk about is raising taxes. He needs more spending money. I don't think so. He's spent enough already and what does America have to show for it? $16 trillion of debt. No thanks. We have seen enough of this act.

Romney 2012

April 3, 2012 11:26 am at 11:26 am |

texan

The Ryan Plan is a "license to kill". It`s the most outright, obvious, blatant effort to eventually eliminate any and all social programs (including social security) as we know it. ----– What was once the John Bircher Society has mutated into the Tea Party.

So exactly where is the Obama and Democrat Socialist Party plan??? Obama's insane budgets have not gotten a single vote of ANYBODY even within his own party! Talk about out of touch!!

Obama and the Socialist Democrat Party - Pedal to the Metal and over the Financial Cliff and into bankruptcy. Because the USA can afford to go $158,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 into debt right?

April 3, 2012 11:41 am at 11:41 am |

Rudy NYC

Four and The Door wrote:

...The only problem is that Mitt Romney is the guy that will give a 20% tax break to every American worker ( notice no class distinction here ). This seems like someone helping every American. All Obama will talk about is raising taxes. He needs more spending money.....
---------------
And when Mitt Romney gives out that 20% tax break, how does he plan to pay for it? Did they forget to mention that they plan to eliminate all capital gains taxes, so that someone like MItt Romney pays next to zero taxes?

We don't need to raise taxes as much as we need to restore balance to the revenue stream, which Republicans always seem to like to throw into deficit mode. We are here where we are today in a fiscal mess because of these conservative "bust then boom" economic policies.

April 3, 2012 11:46 am at 11:46 am |

Four and The Door

Bill from GA
...Don't all Americans want to see Medicare turned into a voucher system only the wealthy can afford to use?
__________________________________________________________________________________________
Sorry Bill from GA but you missed the whole idea. Let's start with facts. Medicare funding runs dry in 2024. If we are lucky. That's 12 years away, Bill. Do you suggest we just ignore the inevitable? Maybe just pray real hard for health or a financial windfall for the United States? Maybe some fixing is required. Apparently Obama is not up to that large task.

Fortunately Paul Ryan is. His plan saves Medicare for those of us who need it in the future and does not raise taxes to do it. The system right now encourages expensive procedures and no consideration of cost or efficiency. How's that working? Does it encourage higher quality of care? Is it sustainable? Not very well, not at all and no.

Under the Ryan Plan government subsidizes health insurance and providers have to compete for your business. They need to give you cost-effective high quality care or you can go to another provider. This system works. We already know that. The current Medicare System doesn't. We already know that. Thankfully Paul Ryan has the intelligence and courage to do what's necessary. I hope the system improves before I need it and I hope it is still there.

April 3, 2012 11:47 am at 11:47 am |

Link

Bring it. We all noticed Obama's budget did not get 1 (ONE) vote in the House. Sadly even Democrats know he is a failure.

April 3, 2012 11:49 am at 11:49 am |

Rudy NYC

Obama Doubling down on Socialism wrote on page 1:

So exactly where is the Obama and Democrat Socialist Party plan??? Obama's insane budgets have not gotten a single vote of ANYBODY even within his own party! Talk about out of touch!!
-----------–
The vote taken last week on Pres. Obama's budget was political theater at its' best. The House Republicans brought a bill to the floor that basically said, "Let's spend this much money." The problem is that the bill contained nothing that specified how any of the money would be spent. They made it impossible for anyone to vote, "Yes." on it.

April 3, 2012 11:49 am at 11:49 am |

Rudy NYC

Four and The Door wrote:

...Sorry Bill from GA but you missed the whole idea. Let's start with facts. Medicare funding runs dry in 2024. If we are lucky. That's 12 years away, Bill. Do you suggest we just ignore the inevitable?....
-----------
A much better plan would be to rid ourselves of the motivating factors that created Medicare in the first place. That being allowing insurance companies to drop people once they reach a certain age, even if they are not ill. That's why we have it.

April 3, 2012 11:52 am at 11:52 am |

Obama Doubling down on Socialism

Rudy NYC - The vote taken last week on Pres. Obama's budget was political theater at its' best.
=============================================================================
Political theater??? But it was THE PRESIDENT'S BUDGET!!! So you are saying all he keeps offering up in terms of budgets are Greek Tragedies or three act Roman Farce's? I would tend to agree.

We need a SERIOUS person in the Whitehouse. One that is willing to tackle the financial mess and not make it ten times worse. That person is Romney, not Obama. He's had 4 years and only made things FAR worse with the future even more frightening.

April 3, 2012 11:57 am at 11:57 am |

RealityBites

Obama's rope a dope to distract from his failed budget proposals, three yrs and counting..

April 3, 2012 11:58 am at 11:58 am |

Rudy NYC

Four and The Door wrote:

...Under the Ryan Plan government subsidizes health insurance and providers have to compete for your business. They need to give you cost-effective high quality care or you can go to another provider. This system works. We already know that. .......
-----------
Reality Check. How do you know "this system works" when we already have Medicare because "this system" does not work. Under the Romney/Ryan Plan, the insurers would be permitted to turn people away.

Suggesting that they go to another insurer is pure fantasy. Look at what most states have with auto insurance. They have a state pool of insurers for people who cannot get auto insurance because they industry has deemed them as "high risk." The pool offers insurance at 2-3 times that going rates. Without the pool, they would have no insurance. The Romney/Ryan plan offers no such solution for people who get turned down by everybody. The plan cuts Medicare by reducing the people on it, with judgement served down by corporate "death panels."

April 3, 2012 11:59 am at 11:59 am |

Fair is Fair

"A much better plan would be to rid ourselves of the motivating factors that created Medicare in the first place. That being allowing insurance companies to drop people once they reach a certain age, even if they are not ill. That's why we have it."
-------–
Why not institute a 2% national sales tax to pay for it? Everyone eventually uses it, right? That way, everyone pays for it as well. I'm no fan of new taxes, but to me that seems the most logical.

April 3, 2012 12:02 pm at 12:02 pm |

B

Ryan’s Budget would CUT this economy and the current recovery into oblivion. The Republicans would continue the policies of Bush & Co. with continued tax cuts for the top end and destroy any potential for the middle class working people who are on the ragged edge now. Just look at what the Republicans have done to states where they took control in the 2010 election...
Total turn-arounds in -Gun laws, control over Women’s health care rights, repression of voting rights to minorities and the elderly and young to eliminate the Liberal vote. Take-over of actual townships and the replacement control of City consuls by partisan thugs !
They are walking all over this Democracy and getting away with it. Sick of hearing about hand gun murders every month now? The NRA Gun lobbies are in bed with Republican State legislatures and passing gun laws that the people are not even aware of.

Wake up America.

April 3, 2012 12:04 pm at 12:04 pm |

Myviewis

People only know that you president Obama are the one with the keys to the White House, you are the one in charge, you are the manager running this show and people have not seen their lives get better, people are scared, sad, disappointed, unemployed, homes in foreclosure, gas prices are skyrocketing, confidence is gone and now you are starting to talk about "social Darwinism," for what to distract people from how bad things are in their lives? Next thing we know we are wasting time arguing about socialism, progressive, communism, capitalism, etc... and none of these arguments are getting people to a better place.

April 3, 2012 12:05 pm at 12:05 pm |

RealityBites

One of our legislative branches is working for Americans and has actually even passed a 2013 budget..
The other has a do nothing leader that has done nothing but bicker over trivial partisian issues, for three yrs now..

April 3, 2012 12:08 pm at 12:08 pm |

Sniffit

"The only problem is that Mitt Romney is the guy that will give a 20% tax break to every American worker ( notice no class distinction here )."

No, the only problem is that people like yourself seem to believe such hamfisted ideologically-rooted grand gestures are even remotely designed to fix any of our problems.

BTW, good to see Obama has been getting the message...I've been calling the GOP's nonsense social darwinism on this site for ages. The GOPers/teatrolls are hellbent on denying Darwin's scientific/biological evolution...even to the point of behaving in a manner that makes one question whether the conservatives' gene pools managed to pull it off over the centuries...but when it comes to social and economic policy, they're all about "natural selection." Someone could do a lengthy comparison of allopatric speciation in the context of science and biology and Darwin's theory of evolution versus the GOP/Teatrolls' equivalent in terms of social darwinism: creating an economic, as opposed to geographic, divide that separates a population into two distinct populations subject to completely different environments, stimuli and stressors (or the lack thereof) and that never mingle or compete (because one doesn't have to and the other really can't), and certainly never reproduce with one another.

April 3, 2012 12:09 pm at 12:09 pm |

Four and The Door

Rudy NYC
...A much better plan would be to rid ourselves of the motivating factors that created Medicare in the first place. That being allowing insurance companies to drop people once they reach a certain age, even if they are not ill. That's why we have it.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
I have to agree with you here. Very few people would be able to defend health care the way it has been run. But the current Medicare system is slowly imploding before our eyes. We can do better. We have to, sooner or later. The longer we wait the higher our national debt grows. We already have a good plan with the Ryan Plan and haven't seen a better one from anyone else. And don't look for one from the Democrats, either. It's an election year and they would rather do the politically easy stuff for another 9 months.

April 3, 2012 12:12 pm at 12:12 pm |

Four and The Door

Rudy NYC
... Mitt Romney is the guy that will give a 20% tax break to every American worker ( notice no class distinction here ). This seems like someone helping every American. All Obama will talk about is raising taxes. He needs more spending money.....
-----
And when Mitt Romney gives out that 20% tax break, how does he plan to pay for it?
___________________________________________________________________________________________
2 ways. The easiest way is to get control of federal government spending. Obama would say that's difficult and for him I am sure he is correct.

The second way is to increase government revenues through a growing economy. Obama would say that's difficult and for him I am sure he is correct. All he can figure out is to raise taxes. No thanks, we are already paying some of the highest taxes in the developed world.

Romney 2012

April 3, 2012 12:17 pm at 12:17 pm |

Sniffit

"His plan saves Medicare for those of us who need it in the future and does not raise taxes to do it. "

It doesn't save anything. It repeals and replaces Medicare with a CouponCare Crapshoot that economists and health care experts have quite easily shown would phase out any effective gov't assistance to the elderly, sick, disabled, et al., by growing the voucher assistance at a slower rate than the inflation of health care and health insurance costs....thus screwing the elderly, sick, disabled, et al., with an increasing burden they can and will not be able to afford or sustain. That is a FACT. The math doesn't lie. Ryan's CouponCare Crapshoot REPEAL AND REPLACE of Medicare constitutes a repudiation of the promises our society made to the least among us and it's a LIE to state that it is "saving Medicare" solely because the GOP is promoting a steaming heap of crap and slapping the same name on it.

April 3, 2012 12:18 pm at 12:18 pm |

Myviewis

Obama is like the boss who gives employees lots of praises, lots of talking, lots of comparisons for a job well done but what good are praises, talking, comparisons if it makes no difference in the employee's paycheck where it really matters.

April 3, 2012 12:18 pm at 12:18 pm |

Sniffit

"Next thing we know we are wasting time arguing about socialism, progressive, communism, capitalism, etc... and none of these arguments are getting people to a better place."

Why do you think the GOP/Teatrolls have spent so much time distracting everyone with that nonsense? The stagnation and collapse of government and legislative compromise and process is a feature of their platform and strategery, not a bug.